The concept of resilience
Resilience has received different kinds of definitions ranging from distinct disciplinary areas. Thus, in the natural sciences, resilience refers to the quality of a material or an ecosystem. In this case, “a trestle of steel is more or less resilient depending on its capacity to recover from load bearing and return to its previous state unchanged. A natural environment that sustains an industrial disaster and recovers also demonstrates resilience” (Ungar, 2012, p. 13). Ungar explained that resilience is also used in the psychological sciences to describe “the ability of individuals to recover from exposure to chronic and acute stress.” In cybernetics, the term refers to individuals who return to a state of homeostasis or experience change and growth (morphogenesis) following exposure to a toxic environment (p. 13). From an ecological point of view, resilience refers “to the ability of socio-ecological systems (SES) to absorb disturbance without flipping into another state or phase” (Cote & Nightingale, 2012, p. 1).
In all the different definitions described above, there is a common denominator: resilience entails the capacity of an individual or social system to deal with adverse situations and continue working on a regular basis. A deeper analysis of the category implies a review of how it has been understood in disciplines such as psychology and ecology, where the concept has been extensively developed for decades.
In psychology, resilience is usually understood as “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or even significant sources of stress” (Southwick, Bonanno, Masten, Panter-Brick, & Yehuda, 2014 a, p. 2). This concept was proposed by the American Psychological Association. Another definition describes resilience as “the capacity of people to recover from trauma, to cope with high levels of stress or to demonstrate competence and coping despite continuous or cumulative adversity” (Bottrell, 2009, p. 323). However, recent literature on the issue describes these concepts as useful but limited. There is a further need to explore what resilience really entails. This implies exploring whether resilience is a trait, a process, or an outcome (Southwick, Bonanno, Masten, Panter-Brick, & Yehuda, 2014b). If resilience is a trait, it could be understood as “the capacity of individuals to deal with adverse situations and is regarded as an ‘individualized’ feature” (p. 2). In this line of thought, resilience would be “the ability to draw on personal or social resources, the ability to detect contingencies and predictability in complex situations and the capacity to react flexibly” (Rauh, 1989, p. 165). Resilience can also be considered as a process. In this framework, resilience might be regarded as a stable trajectory after a highly adverse event or as a trajectory “characterized by a relatively brief period of disequilibrium, but otherwise continued health” (Southwick et al. 2014a, p. 2). If resilience is conceptualized as an outcome in the face of adversities or risk, the concept refers to “the fact of maintaining adaptive functioning in spite of serious risk hazard” (Kaplan, 2002, p. 20). These three ways of understanding resilience (as trait, as a process and as an outcome) are useful when applying this category to the study of regionalism.
A different view emerged in the 1970s from ecologic systems theory. Along this track, the concept ‘resilience’ was used to understand the capacity of socioecological systems (SES) in dealing with changes. This included recovery from unexpected shocks and avoiding undesirable ‘tipping points’ but also the capacity to adapt to ongoing change and fundamentally transform SES if needed (Biggs, Reinette, Schlüter, & Schoon, 2015, p. 21). Along this line, some of the elements pointed out in studies of SES concerning resilience are as follows: (a) capacity to self-organise, (b) forms of adapting and learning in response to internal or external changing conditions, (c) adaptation and change following non-linear dynamics and (d) assuming strong interdependence and different levels of interaction with systems, which are interconnected at multiple scales. Recent trends also describe resilience as contextually and culturally embedded. Thus, as Bottrell (2009) explained, “cultural practices, social processes, social change and the nature of individual-social relations are all significant aspects of the context for analysing resilience” (p. 322). These contextual factors are located in different system levels, from individual agency in microsystems to social structures at macrosystems (p. 125).
When applying the category of resilience to the study of regionalism, some of the ideas explained earlier should be considered. Pundits, such as Pia Riggirozzi, have argued that the idea of resilience developed by Rivarola Puntigliano and Briceño-Ruiz (2013) seems to be just “the persistence of the idea and the value of identity, autonomy, and development. In other words, resilience seems to be defined as merely the preservation of an ‘idea’; that is, the perpetuated need to achieve greater autonomy and independence through regional integration” (Riggirozzi, 2014, p. 465). This criticism deserves to be considered. Resilience is not just the preservation of an idea. In our view, the resilience of regionalism in Latin America is a trait that can be seen in the initiatives of integration and cooperation. It should also be regarded as a process, related to the capacity of local social systems to resist disturbances and setbacks caused by international and domestic crises. Finally, resilience is an outcome of a process in which structural variables linked to the function of the international system are critical but in which the role of the agents is also crucial.
Thus, in respect to regional integration, resilience can be regarded as the capacity of the regional process of integration and cooperation to recover from crises and setbacks. A long-term historical analysis shows the capacity of Latin American regionalism to recover from crises. The Congress of Panamá of 1826 is often considered the first formal attempt to create a regional institutional framework to deal with common problems, but its results were limited because most of the agreements subscribed in the Congress were never ratified. Despite this, a new cycle of regionalism, which De La Reza (2012) described as the Confederative Cycle, began in the 1840s and concluded in the 1860s. Three regional Congresses to promote cooperation and integration were held: in Lima (1846), Santiago (1856) and Lima (1865). When this confederative cycle ended, regionalism seemed to stall, but new initiatives would emerge again. That was the case of the ABC treaty between Argentina, Brazil and Chile or economic proposals around a South American Custom Union, that were fostered in the early decades of the 20th century. After a period of slowdown, new attempts at regional cooperation emerged in the 1940s, the most important of them being the creation of the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) in 1948 and the later creation of the Latin American Free Trade Association (LAFTA) in 1960, which led to the period known as ‘old regionalism’. The period between late 1990s to early 2000s is called the era of open regionalism, followed by a new period from 2003 to 2015 dominated by what has been named ‘post-hegemonic regionalism’. This brief historical review shows the capacity of regionalism to recover from crises and return in new forms and models. The question remains; if regionalism is just a sum of failures, as some scholars argue, why does the regional process not disappear from the political agenda? Our point is that this is because resilience has been a trait of Latin American regionalism.
In our view, resilience in Latin American regionalism should also be seen as a process, with ups and downs as well as changes and continuities. For example, if one looks at regional schemes from the mid-20th century, such as LAFTA, the Central American Common Market (CACM) or the Andean Pact, they had an initial period of successes (ups) that were followed by setbacks (downs), leading to their review as integration processes (changes). A similar process can be observed in the era of open regionalism. The Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) was initially quite successful but entered into crisis in the late 1990s going through several transformations. Once again, these initiatives experienced ups, downs and changes, but they do not disappear. Regional context changed over the time, but the idea or regional unity did not because the factors that fostered resilience remained. These factors are, as our study intends to show, systemic and agential.
Resilience is also an outcome in the sense that it has the capacity to maintain the adaptive functioning of most regional processes. Despite their crises, regional processes function in many dimensions. For example, some claim that trade interdependence is quite low in most Latin American regional schemes such as MERCOSUR and the Andean Community. It is hard to reject such empirical data. This notwithstanding, it does not imply that other dimensions of integration are not working, for example in the domains of migration and freer movement of persons, areas in which both regional processes have achieved some success. The resilience of Latin American regionalism is evidenced in the capacity of regional schemes to adapt and reformulate themselves as response to shifting internal (local) and external conditions. Regionalist initiatives have always returned, in spite of civil wars, shifting political systems and economic crisis. They have also survived as part of alternatives and solutions that deal with shifting global processes such as the economic crisis or world wars of the early 20th century, the Cold War or debt crisis in the second part of the 20th century, the changes produced by the process of globalisation or the emergence of a new multipolar world order in the early 21st century. Hence, resilience has meant adaptation and change through regional blocs, at different systemic levels within the global system(s).
Resilience as contextualised process: the role of systems and agency
Since resilience is contextually and culturally embedded, the context matters when analysing the resilience of Latin American regionalism. This implies the analysis of cultural practices, social processes, social changes and individual –social relations that shape resilience. As explained, the analysis of those factors must be made at the micro and macro levels. In the study of the resilience of regionalism, this implies the analysis of the impact of both the international system and its agents in the regional schemes.
The nature of systems depends on their composition, where one might find an ample variety of forms and outcomes. The eco-system model, with its attachment to systems, forms of adaptation and change, is a source of inspiration for our approach to regional integration. There is, however, a trend in the studies of social systems to see these as disconnected to agents. We are here closer to the position of Alexander E. Wendt (1987) in the field of international relations concerning the importance of the interaction between system and agency in global affairs. According to Wendt:
Despite their many differences. . . the ‘agent-structure’, ‘parts-whole’, ‘actor-system’, and ‘micro-macro’ problems all reflect the same meta-theoretical imperative–the need to adopt, for the purpose of explaining social behaviour, some conceptualisation of the ontological and explanatory relationship between social actors or agents (. . .) and social structures.
(p. 338)
In respect to systems, including in the framework of international/global studies, we turn to scholars Barry Buzan and Richard Little (1993), who asserted that a system refers to a group of parts or units whose interactions are significant enough to justify seeing them in some sense as a coherent set. A group of states forms an international system when “the behaviour of each is a necessary factor in the calculations of the others” (Buzan & Little, 1993, p. 129).
Thus, a system comprises structure, units and interactions. For Buzan and
Little, the term ‘international system’ has two senses. The first refers “to the system of states, and reflects the puzzling, but firmly established use of nation as a synonym for state” (Buzan & Little, 1993, p. 129), while the second refers “to the totality of human interaction on the planet, and incorporates a range of units varying from individuals, through firms, nations and a great variety of other nongovernmental organizations or entities, to states” (Buzan & Little, 1993, p. 129). It is valid to argue that regional institutions are also units of the international system, since these are also part of the great variety of ‘subsystems’ that conforms the international system(s).
A first element of a system is the structure. This is certainly a controversial concept in the social sciences, where there is no unique view. As Giddens and Sutton have pointed out, the history of sociological thought is evidence of this diversity. For Herbert Spencer and August Comte, social structures were groups, collectivities and aggregates of individuals, but Durkheim used the notion of social facts and society as an entity in its own right. Talcott Parsons devised a theory of action in which social structures were to be less ‘thing-like’ and become patterns of normative expectations and guidelines governing acceptable behavior (Giddens & Sutton, 2014, pp. 52–53).
Douglas V. Porpora (1989) describes at least four ways to understand structure: (1) as patterns of aggregate behavior that are stable over time; (2) ...
